Endings and Beginnings

This has been a week of amazing intensity. I can feel the fires of transformation and change burning all around. I can hardly stand to sit still. Right now out my window, the wind is blowing down off the Rocky Mountains preparing for another storm. Some say snow, some say rain. Either way, it's going to get cold and wet again.

I completed my very last class for my year and half stint at the North American Institute for Medical Herbalism. I can hardly believe the time has passed, so much has happened in this year, so much change, growth, and challenge. I'm sad to be leaving behind the friends I made here while in school. We had an amazing time, growing and learning together, but now it is time to spread our wings and fly on our own. Good bye herb school! An ending.
I think I'm finally done with getting more schooling to inflate my self confidence. I may study a few things here and there, or a lot all the time, as I always love to learn about herbs, health, healing and living, but no more long term school commitments like this one. I know enough, I am enough, I do enough...I can share my gifts with the world already.

And so, off I go, to open a new practice by myself, and hopefully help people with herbs and nourishing foods in Tucson, AZ. The wild Sonoran desert and Sky Island mountains call to my free spirit. A beginning.

My last day of work was this past week, and now I'm 'jobless" and paycheck-less. No one came to replace me, and I'm leaving town to open my own practice.An ending. I feel afraid, but also excited. I have no excuses as to why I can't make my own business thrive, I have nothing else to do now, but DO it. A beginning.

My sweeties mom passed away this weekend, and he's off on an aeroplane to attend the funeral and tend to family business. An ending.

But as soon as he comes home and I graduate, we're off together, free as the birds, to do as we please with our lives from here on out, whatever it is we decide to do. A beginning.

I've packed away all my many tinctures, oils and jars of herbs, passing some on to friends who might use them, gently settling them in boxes with padding to protect them on the journey home. I always hate packing them away. I cant get to them when I need them when they are packed away in boxes. I have a few important items in small tincture bottles easily accessible, but the majority are packed up. I haven't spent much time making medicines this past year with school and work, but my fingers are itching to do so, and I'm looking forward to the wonderful plants of the desert from which I can make healing medicines.

I'll probably first put up a Large jar of chapparal oil, as I have classmates who will want some, and clients from all over who use it for all manner of things.

So here I sit, sipping on some sweet linden flower tea harvested last June with my favorite classmates, contemplating the endings, and the new beginnings coming my way.
It's always challenging to be in a time of transition, neither really here, nor there, not sure what is around the next bend, but just wait and see, and hold on for the ride.